It is remarkable how little it sometimes takes to experience healing stillness inside. For what felt like the first time in ages I could last Sunday reconnect with the beauty of nature and catch up with properly being myself. That is the thing with the corona pandemic and the restrictions that follows – the connection to nature has been made much more distant and hard to keep, but finally we could have a break from everything and just experience being a family surrounded by leaves and trees and stones and water.
I am used to having nature just outside the door. Having been living in a small village in Sweden for many years, I had lake and forest just a few hundred meters away. Still there was something missing – the voice of nature was difficult to hear. When I came to Japan though, I could hear it everywhere as clearly as I remember hearing it in the mountains in the north of Sweden – the mountains of Japan, the flowing rivers, the old trees and the cultural heritage that seems so deeply entwined with nature. Why I do not really know; maybe it is just that I feel more at home here than any place I have visited, or maybe there is something special in this part of the world that resonates in me on a deeper level than I am used to.
Sunday we went to a little Japanese garden and tea house. Being Sunday I thought there would be many people but we were almost alone. It was one of those beautiful autumn days and entering the world that lives beyond the gates I was overcome by a feeling I can only describe as the first authentic realization that we are a family. It was as if I was lifted out of everyday life and put into another universe where there were just the three of us immersed in nature sculptured in the image of timeless beauty. We slowly walked the garden path and finished by having matcha (green tea) and wagashi (sugar sweets) in the old house overlooking the pond with a lot of koi (carp fishes).
Days such as this one is like pushing a reset switch buried deep inside, removing all the stress and tension stored since I cannot remember when. Especially now in times of corona, that reset is so needed I feel. I really wish all of you can find those days too, where you can come home to yourselves and grounded in a sense of tranquility take new energized steps towards the future.
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